LASHKAR GAH, Afghanistan—The U.S. has poured more than $100 million into upgrading the Kajaki hydropower plant, the biggest source of electricity in south Afghanistan. And it plans on spending much more, in an effort to woo local sympathies away from the Taliban insurgency.
Yet, one of the biggest beneficiaries of this American-taxpayer-financed project are the Taliban themselves.
Since U.S.-funded repairs of a turbine at the Kajaki plant doubled its capacity in October, nearly half of the total electrical output has flowed to districts in Helmand province where the Taliban administer the grid, Afghan officials say. In those districts, residents pay their monthly electricity bills directly to the insurgents, who use the proceeds to fund their war with American and British troops.
"The more electricity there is, the more money the Taliban make," says Hajji Gul Mohammad Khan, tribal-affairs adviser to the government of Helmand.
Helmand is at the center of the war: It is the Afghan province where massive allied operations, such as the push into the area of Marjah earlier this year, have taken place since President Barack Obama ordered a troop surge in December, aiming to reverse Taliban gains. Helmand is by far the deadliest province for U.S.-led coalition troops, accounting for more than a quarter of total fatalities in the nine years of the war.
The Taliban's continuing stranglehold over wide swathes of Helmand means that the provincial government here must seek an informal accommodation with the insurgents on sharing Kajaki's juice. A large part of this insurgent electricity network is used for irrigation, Helmand officials say, boosting the area's main crop—opium poppies.
"It's very easy for the Taliban to control electricity because the transmission cables cross the districts where they are in total control," says Ahlullah Obaidi, the Helmand government's director of electricity and water. "We don't cut power to their areas, and we let them collect all the money there."
The paradox of Kajaki illustrates how well-meaning development projects can generate unintended consequences in the intensifying war. The plant's planned further upgrade is one of many large development programs the U.S. is rolling out in Afghanistan, in a bet that economic progress will sway ordinary Afghans into supporting the government of President Hamid Karzai.
Unlike Afghanistan's state power utility, the Taliban don't use meters. Instead, they charge every household in areas they control a flat fee of 1,000 Pakistani rupees ($11.65) a month. All in all, the Helmand government estimates it loses out on at least $4 million a year in electricity revenue to the Taliban, this in a country where the monthly wages of an insurgent fighter hover around $200.
Taliban commanders have every right to collect bills and manage the electricity system, says the rebel movement's chief spokesman in the south, Qari Yusef Ahmadi: "We are the government there—not the puppet government of Kabul."
U.S. and North Atlantic Treaty Organization officials acknowledge that the insurgents benefit from Kajaki's electricity. Yet, they say, winning over the South's population centers—Kandahar city and the Helmand provincial capital of Lashkar Gah—is the overwhelming priority, and providing them with more power for industries and homes furthers that aim.
"Electricity is changing people's lives. Whatever industry we have in Helmand is booming" since the Kajaki turbine was repaired in October, says Rory Donohoe, the U.S. Agency for International Development field program officer for Helmand. The number of ice-making factories in Lashkar Gah went from one to five, he says, and the local marble polishing plant works three shifts a day instead of just one, all of this providing gainful employment.
Mark Sedwill, NATO's senior representative in Kabul who serves as the civilian counterpart to Gen. Petraeus, adds that some compromises are inevitable in such a complex conflict.
"We always want to be in a situation where the government of Afghanistan has full authority over every square inch of its territory—but that's not yet the situation," he says.
American civilian and military officials in Afghanistan have been arguing for months over whether further investment is warranted in Kajaki. Civilian officials point to the hydropower plant's sustainability and long-term potential, while military commanders are pressing to remedy the rolling blackouts that strike Kandahar and Lashkar Gah through a quick fix of installing diesel-fuelled generators in the two cities.
At a recent gathering with President Karzai to discuss the planned drive against the Taliban in Kandahar, local tribal elders named reliable electricity as their main priority, says U.S. Lt. Gen. David M. Rodriguez, the coalition's day-to-day commander in Afghanistan.
"Support from the population is key to success in a counterinsurgency campaign, and rapidly improving the electrical infrastructure in Kandahar city has the potential to be a critical enabler," he said in an email.
Copyright ©2010 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.
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